I'm 29 and trying to get a handle on my finances so that, one day, I can buy a home of my own. I've been reading personal finance blogs recently and decided to start one chronicling my own struggles and success (hopefully). I am lucky, considering the amounts of debt and tales of tragedy I've read about... but I am making some positive changes and moving in the right direction.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

What I want for for Valentine's Day...

...is our emergency fund back in place. It now has the whopping amount of $0 in it, which is what I've been used to for most of my adult life - but I had gotten very comfortable and satisfied that we had that money just in case. Not having it anymore feels like a giant step backwards.

We took $1,000 from our profits at the convention back in November and named that as our emergency fund, which neither one of us has ever had before. We congratulated ourselves on our entrance into the world of financial planning and fiscal responsibility. Last month, R decided to take out an advertisement in a comic book that was closely related to his business. But of course, the problem of living paycheck to paycheck arose and he wouldn't be getting another paycheck before the advertisement fee was due... so we decided to debit our emergency fund for the amount of about $400 for the advertisement.

Okay, so it now had about $600 in it. Not a problem. Not as much as I'd like, but still a decent cushion for us. And hey, anything is better than nothing.

I asked him about it the other day when I noticed that he had been receiving a lot of mail from the bank where his checking account is. He reluctantly told me that he had forgotten to deposit enough money to cover the automatic payments for the business (like website hosting, etc.) and that the account was in the red. I mentioned that it couldn't be because we still had the remainder of the emergency fund in that account. Well, the emergency fund has been dribbled away... on some business things and some personal things, under the idea that he'd replenish it when he could. So it stands at $0, after he deposited enough money to get the account back into the black.

I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me when he told me about this. I've worked hard at organizing and paying back our debts, coming up with a payment plan, and taking on some freelance work for extra money (which I'll blog about in another post). We've both been on the same page and have been excited to track our progress. So it feels like we're back at square one, even though I know that's not the case. I tried to think of an accurate word for how I'm feeling and the best I can come up with is "deflated."

Recreating the emergency fund will take money away from our debt repayment plan and slow us down. This isn't the end of the world, but it's very disheartening.

I love R dearly and I knew his terrible history with money management when we got together, so I am getting over this as quickly as I can. I trust him completely... however, the new emergency fund will certainly not be in his checking account. Is that still trust?